Oh, the carnage! I feel like I am part of an advancing rank and everyone around me is being felled. Staggering, I realize that I am somehow still alive, but for how much longer I know not...
I bet that Stanford is being incredibly choosy in its interview selections because it wants to be sure that nearly everyone selected would really want to attend, particularly since the number of interviews have been shaved by 30%. How do they decide who would almost certainly attend? Probably by considering the following two questions (among others):
(1) Would this applicant be really gung ho about studying for FIVE years?
(2) Would this applicant benefit substantially by the new scholarly
concentration requirement?
Because each of these questions pertain to unique features of Stanford's curriculum, applicants who elicit affirmative responses by the admissions committee would probably be invited for an interview, even with mediocre statistics. Many super-stats people would fall by the wayside, however, because they may not benefit as much from Stanford's curriculum and Stanford would have to compete with other top schools for them, which would be a losing battle unless these applicants really wanted to attend medical school for an additional year.
Actually, I have no idea what Stanford is thinking, but I would not be surprised if the above two questions are really important in determining an applicant's fate.